In vitro diagnostics (IVD) allows labs to assist in the diagnosis of disease based on assays performed on patient fluid samples. IVD includes various types of analytical tests and assays related to patient diagnosis and therapy that can be performed by analysis of a liquid sample taken from a patient's bodily fluids, or abscesses. These assays are typically conducted with automated clinical chemistry analyzers (analyzers) into which tubes or vials containing patient samples have been loaded. Because of the variety of assays needed in a modern IVD lab, and the volume of testing necessary to operate a lab, multiple analyzers are often employed in a single lab. Between and amongst analyzers, automation systems may also be used. Samples may be transported from a doctor's office to a lab, stored in the lab, placed into an automation system or analyzer, and stored for subsequent testing.
Storage and transport between analyzers is typically done using trays. A tray is typically an array of several patient samples stored in test tubes. These trays are often stackable and facilitate easy carrying of multiple samples from one part of the laboratory to another. For example, a laboratory may receive a tray of patient samples for testing from a hospital or clinic. That tray of patient samples can be stored in refrigerators in the laboratory. Trays of patient samples can also be stored in drawers. In some automation systems, an analyzer can accept a tray of patient samples and handle the samples accordingly, while some analyzers may require that samples be removed from trays by the operator and placed into carriers (such as pucks) before further handling. Trays are generally passive devices that allow samples to be carried and, in some cases, arranged in an ordered relationship.
Generally, information about sample tubes stored in a tray is not known until an operator or sample handling mechanism interacts with each tube. For example, a sample handling robot arm may pick up a tube, remove it from the tray and place it into a carrier. The carrier can then travel to a decapper station to remove any possible cap and pass by a barcode reader so that a barcode on the side of the tube can be read to reveal the contents of the tube. In many prior art sample handling mechanisms, the identity of the tube is not known until after the tube is removed from the tray. In this manner, all tubes in a tray will often be handled the same way until after a tube is placed onto a carrier in an automation system.
Some systems allow an operator to insert a tray into a drawer and automatically rotate tubes to assist in later evaluation and identification. However, such systems still rely on conventional automation systems to move sample tubes from trays to barcode reading stations and little or no characterization of sample tubes is performed until after the tube is removed from the tube tray. This can result in practical constraints on the variety of tubes used, because a sample handler cannot account for a great degree of variance in height, width, shape, and whether caps or tube top cups are placed on the tubes.
Accordingly, most prior art tube tray drawers and workflow lacks intelligent systems to automatically characterize tubes in a tube tray when placed into an instrument, instead relying on post-loading processing of tubes once they are removed from the tube tray or more manual characterization in the workflow.